Johnny Bravo: Johnny Bee Good

Every big film licence and TV series out there has a game tie-in; it's just the way things are done these days. It's getting to the stage where even cartoons have a pool of multiple games on numerous formats.

While their visual style would appear to make them perfect candidates, in Johnny Bravo's case – where comedy is a huge part of the series' appeal – there's more to consider than might initially meet the eye. Just how do you do a show such as this justice on a mobile phone?

That's the overriding problem with Johnny Bee Good; apart from the obvious decision to have Johnny Bravo starring as the lead, this effort captures none of the humour or sheer zaniness of Cartoon Network's finest – it's just a standard platformer with Johnny Bravo paraphernalia dropped in at the last minute. At least, that's how it feels. There's essentially nothing wrong with the gameplay itself, but there's also nothing here that you can't find in scores of other games that simply don't feature Mr Bravo.

So, does Johnny's appearance alone make this worth a purchase for loyal fans? Well, his application is fairly minimal, in truth. Story wise, it's your job to guide Johnny through level after level in order to impress a certain red-haired lady, who tasks him with picking up her love hearts scattered across the city. The number of love hearts available in each level is clearly displayed at the start, though picking up all of them is not necessary for progression.

Indeed, most levels have more than one route, with varying numbers of hearts available down each path, meaning it's up to you to decide whether it's worth taking what is usually the more hazardous route to pick up an extra bundle of hearts. Such danger in Johnny Bee Good comes in the form of various animals and insects. Bees, dogs and birds, for instance, all take away one of your three lives if you come into contact with them – unless you manage to jump directly on top of them, that is, which is no easy task as even the slightest of angles in your approach can lead to you coming off the worst.

The safest way of dealing with threats is to shoot them by tapping the '5' key, with only one Bravo 'bullet' needed to take them out. However, it's often the game's pitfalls that pose more problems. As in any platformer, Johnny Bee Good is full of ledges, levels and gaping gaps that require you to employ a leap or two in order to make your way through. However, the game's problem is that it requires you to hold down one of the two jumping keys ('1' for left, '3' for right) solidly for the entire leap, as well as also holding the '6' key. Difficult to do in itself, the game also sometimes misreads the command and stops your progression either left or right mid-jump, resulting in you falling straight to your death.

It's a somewhat random occurrence that can surely only be put down to the slight lag that afflicts play throughout, but one that will lead to the unfair loss of many lives and no doubt try the patience of a large proportion of players. It's also a mighty shame given that the level design itself, while fairly simple, is far from shoddy, paying homage such genre classics as Mario.

But with Bravo's brash humour limited to a few pre-game speech bubbles, coupled with some control irritations, it's hard to recommend this above the leagues of other platformers that do the job more proficiently sans Johnny Bravo. That said, when you consider this is a game that is fairly Bravo-light itself, that's not actually much of a loss, leaving Johnny Bee Good without much of an audience to call its own.